


Ain't no shrink

by Little_Firestar84



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Back from the death, F/M, Leonard Snart Lives, post season one, post season two
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-13
Updated: 2017-05-13
Packaged: 2018-10-31 08:50:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10895898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Little_Firestar84/pseuds/Little_Firestar84
Summary: Once again Martin Stein finds himself playing shrink for Mick Rory, as the Legend and former arsonist starts to see- and have rather interesting discussions- with his departed previous partner, Leonard Snart, the infamous Captain Cold... but maybe not everything is as it seems, and the cold breeze the crew from the Waverider keeps feeling may means actually something. Maybe, just maybe, Mick isn't as crazy and gone as they all seem to think, and there could be some truth to his visions of his lost friend...





	Ain't no shrink

“So, Snart last night came back to visit me, and we talked about why I’m still here and what the hell it means to me and what we thinkit takes to be a true hero.” Mick said calmly, like he was talking about the weather outside, and definitely not like someone who had had a discussion with a fragment of his own deluded psyche instead of an actual human being, or at least a next gen AI; his eyes were starry, gazing to the grey, metallic ceiling of the sip. “I gotta tell you, Old Man, it really felt like one of those stories… the one at Christmas, you know?”

“I… think you may mean “A Christmas Carol”, one of Dickens’ most famous works?” Stein tentatively said, sitting on a chair while Mick Rory was spread over the old man’s bed, pretending it was a shrink’s velvety red couch, like one of those the arsonist had been visited far too many times for his own good. 

“Yep, that’s the one!” Mick chuckled triumphantly, celebrating like it was a victory by sipping from the neck of the bottle the warm beer; Stein felt shivers running through himself, and yet he sweated, as he saw the mess his cot was turning into. 

“Mr. Rory… not that I don’t appreciate your trust in me, because, you have to believe me, I do…” Stein said, his eyes focused on the mess that was warm beer and cigar cinder, his voice trembling a little bit as he kept thinking about all the things Mick could do to him- even without the aid of his formidable weapon. “But as I tried to explain far too many times, although a doctor, I am not exactly what you’d call a M.D.- and I fear the mind may be a far too complex machine for my own understanding.”

Mick turned to stare, cold eyes and demeanor, at the scientist; he wasn’t going to dignify the Old Man with an answer, not when they’ve gone through the same argument so many times they had both actually loose count; he wasn’t an idiot- of course he knew that Stein wasn’t a shrink, there was no freaking way in hell that he hadn’t gotten it through his skull after having heard it something like ten thousand times. But he also knew that the Old Man felt guilty enough for not having trusted him that he wouldn’t have shared their little conversations with the others. 

Besides, Stein had lived a very long life, and he had a family, and he was still married. And he kind of had friends. So there was a good chance he had some kind of understanding of life in general- even if no one could understand what was between the two Rogues, Heat Wave and Captain Cold, as the little kid had, rightly, nicknamed them.

“So, back to Snart…” Mick chuckled as he started to talk yet again, with Stein, resigned and tired, shaking his head and cleaning his eyeglasses with a sleeve of his pullover,

Mick kept talking for over an hour about his lost best friend and what they talked about in his “visions”, while Stein pretended to listen to him, nodding every now and then like he was part of the conversation. 

And if they felt cold… they knew it was because something was wrong with their Ship.

* * *

As she was lazily strolling through the Waverider, lost in her thoughts and in the magnificence of the future technology, Amaya suddenly stopped dead in her track; her animal senses were on full alert, her muscles tense, ready to attack whoever dared to spy on her. Consciously, she knew that on board there was only people she could trust- maybe not friends, not even partners, but at least allies (at least for now), but she had been knowing them for far a too short time. 

Everything in her screamed that this could be different. That she could trust them. But there was a part of her- a piece of her broken heart, who toldher that she couldn’t care about anyone any longer, that she wasn’t supposed to. 

The Vixen, her closed, took a big breath, gently and reverently skimming with her right hand over the pendant around her neck. With the senses of the wild felines of Africa, she turned quickly, ready to attack whoever dared to approach her- whoever was crazy enough to stalk a member of the famous JSA.

But, as she turned around, she didn’t see anyone- nor she sensed them with her animal senses.And yet, she felt… something. It wasn’t necessarily uneasiness: she felt like… shivers running through her very veins, like someone was at her side, trying to communicate with her and yet unable to. 

She was the bearer of the Animal kingdom; hers was the Tantu Totem, amulet of the God of mischief Anansi. Was is so hard- so impossible- to believe that there was something waiting for them on the other side of this existence, and that sometimes, just sometimes, those wandering spirits desired to remain at the side of those they had loved and cared for in their previous state of being? 

Was it possible that it was of Rex the presence she felt at her side, that his love for her was still alive, even if his heart wasn’t beating any longer- even if she herself was now lost to her own time? Or was it her own imagination- and the sweet humming of the time-ship, Gideon’s own presence, something so strange she could barely pretend to understand any of it?

“Amaya?” She heard a voice coming for her back, and as she turned, ready to strike, Amaya met Ray’s chocolate eyes, filled with worry. The young man gulped down a mouthful of saliva, looking cautiously at her; the woman could see her was worried- maybe even scared- for he knew his own limitations, and who and what he was once he wasn’t wearing his suit, and he had seen first-hand, many times, what she was capable of. “Amya… are you… all right?” He asked tentatively, taking a step back. 

Amaya simply shook her head, chuckling under her teeth; it had been a dream, only her imagination. Ghosts and spirits, as legends had though her, could be real, but she now knew what she had witnessed first-hand had been just a trick of her mind: no one had been that lucky to meet those they had lost once they had reached the great beyond.

“Sorry I startled you, Ray.” She said, slowly reaching him, and gently squeezing his shoulder, as to reassure him that she meant him no harm. “My imagination is playing games with me. I must be quite homesick…”

Slowly, they walked at each other side, toward the command bridge, both of them pretending they weren’t feeling any shivers down their spines….

* * *

As soon as he saw Mick Rory entering the kitchen, Stein somehow knew already what would have happened in a matter of seconds; suddenly losing all appetite, he pushed to the side the plate of chicken with wine- a specialty of his daughter. The replicator and Gideon did a pretty good job, and he intellectually knew that this plate was worth of s stellar chef; but the reason he liked this dish so much had little to do with the mind and the palate, and everything with the heart, for he would have visions of his little girl, this clever, smart woman who loved science with all of her heart, who would try and do her best to just create something, with her own two hands.

Eating this dish remembered him of home and his family. And yet, all he felt as Rory sat before him and took the plate from under his nose, was nauseous.

“Gotta tell you, mister. That’s good- but the one your kid does? That’s perfection.”

Stein sighed, his chin on one hand. It was bad enough that Mick Rory wanted nothing more than spend his time talking with him like he was some kind of shrink, but he had also taken to… spend his time with his family whenever they would get back to their proper time. And, what was worse, his family actually _liked_ him. Especially his baby girl, who had taken to call him “Uncle Mick” - like it wasn’t bad enough that she was _dating_ Ray Palmer and that he dared to ask _him_ for love advice.

“Mister Rory! I told you already! I am not a psychiatrist! You’d do better asking for Gideon’s opinion, for God’s sake!” Calmly and slowly chewing on the soft and tasty white meat, Mick didn’t say a word, nor replied immediately to Stein’s sudden outburst. “What, no remark this time?” Stein asked, a bit skeptical, lifting an eyebrow. 

Mick, without stopping to look at Stein like he had suddenly grew a second head, calmly swallowed the bite, and politely cleaned his mouth with a corner of a dark green napkin; Stein didn’t know how to better describe the scene, either as comical or surreal, but the former arsonist simply shrugged.

“Snart says that I’ve got to work on my manners, if I want to keep staying around people. Says he wants for his sister’s friends to be… better than what we sued to be, and I, for once, agree with him.”

Martin simply rolled his eyes, and whished that, instead of meat, there was something a bit stronger- like some Vodka, or something that could erase his memory. 

“Ok, let’s hear. What else did Mister Snart tell you about?”

* * *

Sara woke up, startled, for her dream; yet again she had dreamt the same thing, and lately it had happened so many times she didn’t know what she was supposed to think. 

She groaned, frustrated, knowing all too well what she had been denied in her dream; her whole body was still tingling with sensations, rivulets of pearled sweat covering her most sensitive parts, like they wanted to increase the sensation for her. 

Breathing steadily at semi-closed lips, Sara closed her eyes, and leaned back on her bed, her right hand traveling across the expanse of her muscles, towards the lost fruit that had gone for far too long uncared for; chuckling, spinning her head round and round, she tentatively touched herself over her clothes, and gasped, opening her eyes wide; it was too much, too soon, and it has been far too long for her- besides, she didn’t know how far it was to imagine his blue yes, looking into hers like they knew every and each of her secrets, all the corners of her soul, imagining him doing those marvelous and forbidden things to her body.

And yet, she couldn’t help it. Almost every night, she would dream of him, of the empty promises of things to come, the shadow of his cold touch on her a perpetual dream that would leave her unsatisfied, her evil mind always waking her up before he could end their dance, his touch could bring her to paradise she was starting to forget. 

The Blonde assassin abruptly stood, and threw on some clothes, washing her face with the coldest water at her disposal- not because of him, she repeated to herself, but because she needed to wake her up, and once and for all. It had been going on for months, probably since they had met a past version of their once friend from a time he wasn’t a Legend yet.

It was just that, Sara liked to repeat to herself. It was because she had just gotten a taste of him. Because he hadn’t kept his promise, and had to go and be a true hero in the finest sense of the world. Her mind was playing games on her, she repeated to herself as she strolled through the semi-empty vessel, and the only reason she kept making the same dream again and again, almost every now, was because she missed intimate action. 

“Ehy, is there any chance that we may come back to Camelot?” She asked as she reached Rip’s “office”; without waiting for the older man to greet her in the proper way, she let her weight fall on a complicated chair, one that she was pretty sure would have been in its place in a French mansion, at the time of Mary Antoinette, or in Moira Queen’s office back in Star City.

Rip simply chuckled, shaking his head, unable to control his grin; he kept his focused on the maps right before him, though, knowing that this work was far too important to get lost in anecdotes, that there was no way that he would be betraying his Captain’s trust- not when he had caused all of them so much pain.

“Let me guess, our Sir Lance-a-Lot misses the beloved warrior Queen…”

Sara chuckled, remembering the joke she had made herself. “Ehy, C’mon, I don’t see what could be wrong with that, not when her beloved Kind gets his groove on with Miss Merlin. I’m pretty sure they were open-minded enough to not have a problem with open marriages. Besides, worst case scenario, we could always invite him to join in the fun…” Rip simply chuckled, trying to not think about the images that the beloved Sara was putting in his head- naked sweating bodies of sexy, lethal women having some fun of the adult variety. “I guess I just need to get laid. Like, seriously.”

“Please tell me you are not... you don’t mean…” Rick was almost tempted to run away from his chair, a little scared; he didn’t mind Miss Lance, but Sara was… well, she was Sara, his good friend and his Captain, and he respected her way too much to merely consider her a good lay.

Besides, yeah- as much he liked his women on the “taking charge” side, he was a tiny bit scared of this woman in particular. 

“Of course she means that, sonny! And if I were you, I wouldn’t lose any time!” As soon as he heard the cheerful voice coming from outside his study, Rip sighed, his forehead hitting again and again the hard wood of his old desk; but, still, he knew what was about to happen, and that nothing would have stopped that man from getting involved in discussions he had nothing to do with.

“Mister Carter, I asked you to stop calling me sonny!” Rip hissed between clenched teeth, as Sara, right before him, barely resisting laughing out loud; the assassin was making such an effort that she was starting to turn purple. But, as he kept coming closer and closer with total nonchalance, almost as owed the place, “Mister Carter” tsk-tsked the former Captain and Time Masters; when he was at Sara’s side, he even dared to lift his hand, as to pat Rick on the head. “Don’t. You. Dare.” Rip spelled, as he was talking with a five years old and not an actual adult- not that Michael Carter had anything to do with an actual adult…

“Rip, what did we say? This is no way of talking to your old man…” Michael tsk-tsked him once again, as indulging as only a parent could be.

“For God’s sake, Mister Carter! I told you already, I will never, ever refer to you as dad!” Rip stood, red in face, clearly fuming with anger, just a mere inches from his opponent; Michael Carter didn’t stop grinning, like he was an idiot, like he knew he would have, eventually, won the argument, and focused his laser-like stare at his “son”, blue eyes in a pair that were so identical one would have said they belonged to the same person. 

“Rip, son, I know I hurt you…” he paused a fraction of second, scratching, a bit uneasy, the back of his head. “I know that that _I will_ hurt you, but I told you already- a future version of you came to me, in the year 2468, and told me that I would have, one day, had you, but that your mother and I had to leave you in an orphanage, well, we will have to leave you in an orphanage, so that time pirates wouldn’t try to hurt you to get to me, because by that time I would have become the greatest time masters of the them all- actually, future you says I’m going to be the first time master, and that to become one, I should have traveled to the past so that you could have thought me to be a time master and I could, in return, form the actual time-masters and be one of your mentors in my elder form under a pretended alias I wasn’t informed of and…”

“Ok, you know what? I think I will leave you two to mind your own business, and I’ll try to assassinate some evil ninjas on the holographic-bridge, all right?” Her head pulsating with the biggest headache since Michael had joined their ranks a few weeks before, Sara hurried away, before the blonde (self-acclaimed) football star from the future could decide to try and join her; she liked Michael “you can call me Booster” Carter, and she was extremely amused by his bickering with Rip; but time travel gave her enough of an headache, and all that talking about meeting past and present and futures versions of the duo, well, it did nothing but just increase said headache, which would in turn make her more agitated and stressed and nervous in general. 

Like she wasn’t frustrated enough thanks to her meeting with the Legion of Doom a few months before…

Sighing and groaning, Sara dialed her access code to the holographic bridge, and instructed Gideon on the exercise she wished to perform; but she couldn’t end the sentence, for the words died in her throat as she felt shivers running through her body, a jolt of something… both cold and yet electric skimming over the naked skin of her neck- almost like someone had touched her there with their own lips, for merely a fraction of second. 

Gasping, she turned around, looking for someone she knew couldn’t be there. She closed her eyes, took a big breath and once again repeated her instructions to the trusty AI, hoping that she could sweat off all those weird and awful sensations. 

It was time to stop thinking about what ifs and buts; there was just no reason to. The past couldn’t be changed- not their own past, at least, for she knew all too well that breaking time once again would have destroyed potentially their own world and the multiverse together with it - _be_ was gone, and he wouldn’t have returned.

Besides, she was pretty sure she liked girls more than she had actually liked him, and maybe, she would have eventually believed it, had she kept repeating it again and again and again... 

* * *

“I’m sorry Jackson, are you saying you don’t know what’s going on with the main engine?”

Jax turned to look with a deadly expression at his other nuclear half, finding it hard to believe that Stein couldn’t understand such a simple statement, repeated far too many times for his own good, such as “I don’t know what’s wrong with the main temporal engine”.

“Yes!” He almost screamed, frustrated- either for how Stein was parroting him or because he couldn’t understand what was cooling the system, he wasn’t sure.

“Calm, down young man, that’s no way to answer to your eldest…”

Jax lifted an eyebrow. “Seriously, Grey? You show signs of insanity and then you sue the respect your eldest card? Man, that’s not how it works!”

“Insanity? I beg your pardon, mister Jackson, but could I be showing signs of insanity?”

“By repeating the same thing again and again and expecting a different result or explanation.” Both half of Firestorm turned to see, in the hallway, Mick Rory, leaning against the side of the door, casually sipping a warm beer, like it was his usual. They couldn’t get their eyes off him, surprised by how he could threw in any discussion random tidbit of actual knowledge. “What? I saw it in a movie once. Anyway, Old Man, I wanted to talk with you about that think we talked about the other day?”

Stein sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose and forgetting that Jax was there and no one besides them was supposed to know about Mister Rory’s conversations with his late friend- even if Stein was almost positive that Jax picked something up during one of their fusions, when he was particularly worried about the arsonist’s whereabouts. “Let me guess, you had once again a nice conversation with your departed partner…”

Mick shrugged, unable to get mad with Stein- Len had told him once that he was supposed to be nicer to them as they all were his partners now, and he had been adamant that, if he wanted for them to trust him, he had to let them in and be honest and trust them too first.

“Yep. We talked about women, and how I have no one to write home to…”

“Dude, we don’t write home!”

“Kid, calm down, I was merely using a metaphor- and yes, I know what it means. Len says I should expand my own dictionary. Now, I was saying, we talked about the fair sex, which Len thinks is a far limited definition, as there’s nothing frail or delicate about such as our Miss Lance or Amaya. Hell, even your woman, Old Man. Anyway, as I was saying, Len thinks…”

* * *

“We are all so, sorry for your loss, Kara…” Nate affectionately squeezed Kara’s shoulder, as the last daughter of Krypton hugged herself, unable to take her eyes away from the comatose form of her world’s Leonard Snart; he was paler than what he had ever looked like, and even colder. And all because his injuries had been so severe that not even the futuristic technology from their vessel had been able to undo the damage he had suffered from their fight with the Anti-Monitor… it had been too little, too late, and even if his body was fighting, they were all aware that his mind, his very soul, had trespassed.

“So… what do we do? We call his sister? Use the portal and bring her here?” Sara asked. She too was unable to stop looking at this Leonard Snart, the perfect copy of the man she had learnt to trust- the one who made her laugh, made her feel good about herself despite her many faults, the one she believed, for what had felt an eternity, she could have been able to build a future with… 

Kara shook her head, sighing, sadder and sadder; she skimmed over the cold skin of the man she had come to trust, the man who had become like an older brother to her, and her eyes stung with unshed tears not for the first time as she thought back to his history. “Lisa died when they were both just children. Their father slapped her under Len’s eyes, and she fell and hit her head. He says… he said his only consolation was that she didn’t suffer.” 

Sara circled the alien’s shoulders with an arm, her cheek resting atop of Kara’s halo of blonde, angelic hair; she sighed then, and looked around the infirmary, lifting an eyebrow. “Wait. Where’s Mick?”

Stein took off his glasses, and massaged his tired eyes, and sighed, disappointed with himself, feeling bad for how he had mistreated Mick in the last few months; not for the first time since they had landed on the Waverider, his behavior towards the fellow Legend ashamed himself. 

“I fear this may be a little too much for Mister Rory. You see, in the last few months, he has once again started to talk with…” Stein gulped down a mouthful of saliva, unable to end his sentence; and yet, as his gaze landed on the unconscious form of Leonard Snart, they all knew what he actually meant.

Rip, still unused to the role of captain-in-second, opened his mouth as to speak and reprimand the older scientist, but Sara, seeing where he was going, knowing him well enough, lifted her right hand, and stopped him before even just one word would leave his mouth; _she_ was the captain, they were _her_ men and it was up to her to discipline them, no matter who it was.

“Ok, we all remember what happened the last time Mick said he was talking with Len, right?” She looked around, lifting an eyebrow; Amaya was hugging herself, unable to meet her gaze, while all the men were either biting their lips or rolling on their heels, answering her without saying a word out loud. “Ok, then you get why you should have told your captain, right?”

“Why, what happened?” Kara asked, puzzled, looking from one to the other members of the Legends. 

“Last time he started talking with his departed partner, he kind of joined The Legion of Doom.” 

“There was no “kind of” involved, Mister Palmer.” Stein sighed, reddening a little; his voice was loud, and he was disappointed- with himself- and angry. Yes, he didn’t remembered how the Legion had changed history, but he knew it had happened, and he knew he had been turned into a puppet in those madmen’s hands. “Mister Rory allied himself with the Legion, but he was so kind to merely turn us all into a band of pathetic losers and cold-blooded assassins instead of simply erasing us from reality.” Sarcasm was clear in the older man’s voice, as Kara simply looked from one Legend to the next one, a bit shocked, trying her best to not lose her smile and keep standing for all the good things she stood for. 

The silence fell between them, as all they could keep doing was looking at the body right before them, a shell of a man who, in his world, had been a hero…

* * *

“What, you don’t stay with the rest of the merry men?”

As he leaned against a cold wall, few meters from the infirmary, Mick did his best to not listen to the voice in his head; his beer was still in his hand, and his eyes were focused in the void, for he knew that Leonard wasn’t to be deterred any longer; he couldn’t simply drink himself into oblivion any longer, his friend would have kept talking, again and again, just like he had done in the last few months. 

“You pretend I’m not here, Mick? Is that how you treat your friends? Wouldn’t be your enemy, then…” Snart retorted, grinning; he was standing right before Mick, clad in his usual thermic attire, the very same clothes he had been sported the day he had died right before his best friend’s- his partner’s- eyes. 

“I pretend you are not here, because you are not here. I’m not right into the head. Haven’t been since my folks died…” He added at low voice, sighing, almost as he was barely thinking the words, as if was just a discussion in his own mind. 

Snart took a big breath and massaged the bridge of his nose at closed eyes, frustrated; hands in the pockets of his heavy pants, he took the few steps that separated him from his longtime ally, so that they could be eye-to-eye.“So, let’s hear Mick, why should I be just a fragment of your imagination, uh?”

Mick knew what you should have done; he knew that answering had to meaning, and yet, every time he saw Snart, he couldn’t help himself; it was like turning back time- and yet, it was so different. Back when they had joined this team of outcasts and misfits, they were merely two thieves working together, and Snart was far from the “decent” man people pictured him to be under his bravado; but traveling on the ship- and yes, he wasn’t an idiot, also meeting the blonde assassin- had changed him. One year before he wouldn’t have understood why Snart had been forced to strand him somewhere where he couldn’t hurt anyone; now, not only he fully got it- he was even ready to forgive him, for, in his shoes, he would have probably done the same. 

Not that he could forgive a fragment of his own imagination, but, still…

“So, you talked with yourself. Nothing new there, pal. But trust, I am the real deal.”

“Really? Because that’s exactly what a fragment of my mind would say.”

“But a fragment of your mind wouldn’t have a plan to get back to life…”

But Mick simply shook his head, chuckling. “That’s what I would say to convince myself that I wasn’t just an imaginary thing.”

Snart clenched his teeth, snorting. “Ok, you know what? I tell you my plan… if it works… than I’m not a fragment of your imagination.”

Mick simply shrugged as he listened to Snart; it wasn’t like he could lose anything. After all, everyone was already hell-bent on him being crazy anyway…

* * *

“You know, my cousin, Kal, he is going to be heart-broken… even if Len had joined the League thanks to Luthor, Jay always says they had become trusted allies, and even if he had started out as a Rogue, Snart still had a code. You know, when I started out as a reporter at CatCo, I would sometimes cover him, and he was just like this modern version of Robin Hood, I mean, if Robin Hood was real…”

“Oh, it’s an actual thing here! Kind of. One of Rip’s agents of time went back to the past and sort of build the myth of Robin Hood. Apparently it’s a thing Time Masters do, even if they shouldn’t. Has anyone ever told you that we even have Camelot? As in, the Actual Camelot. Not the one from time of the Romans, because the theory is that Arthur and Guinevere were in truth…”

“Nate, leave her alone! She is mourning!” Sara glared at her fellow time-traveler, clenching her teeth, her voice a mere hiss; she was starting to add something else, when she was cut short by another voice, and a new arrival. 

“Guys! Snart says he has a plan! Don’t turn off the stuff that keeps his twin alive!” As soon as Mick entered sick bay screaming in panic and fear, all eyes turned to look at him; few of them were worried, others were shocked, others, like Kara, didn’t know how they were supposed to react to begin with.

Sara, taking a big breath, slowly approached her “soldier<2, almost like he was a scared, lost wild animal ready to jump and attack her at any given moment; with saddened eyes, and an heavy heart, she put an hand on his shoulder, and squeezed it affectionately, trying to make him see how this was hurting her too- how hard it was for her as well. 

“Mick, I know you cared for Len… and that you sometimes feel like you didn’t get closure, but you have to accept that he is gone and that he isn’t coming back.”

“Why? Only you get to return to life?” Mick asked, as cold as never before; he stood in silence for what felt an eternity, then, looking at his teammates, he gulped down a mouthful of saliva, and he spoke yet again, with a sincerity, and a deepness that none of them had ever felt before irradiated from the man before. “I know what you think. That I’m crazy. And you know what? You are probably right. And I know it. But we have to try. Because maybe, I’m normal… and I don’t even know it.”

Sara parted, and then went to stay at the feet of the bed; she couldn’t stop looking at this man- a copy of the one she had lost, so many chances and opportunities gone before she could even get to experience anything with him to begin with. 

“Gideon? Are you positive that Mister Snart’s consciousness has left his body?”

“Affirmative, Captain.”

Sara opened her mouth as to speak, but before she could give any command, the lights on the ship started to flicker; alarms started to scream on the whole vessel, and yet it was like they had no whatsoever control over it; they knew all too well the sensation- it was just like being in the middle of a huge time-quake, and yet it felt somehow different. 

“Whoa. Does it happen a lot?” Kara asked as she came back to her feet; she was massaging her sore back, after having been thrown around the room for the whole duration of the phenomenon. 

“Yeah, but never like this, though. I gotta go and check the main engine and see what …”

“Mister Jackson? Did the temporal anomaly affect you?” When Jax had stopped talking in the middle of the sentence, and had started to look like a truck had hit him, Stein had immediately came to his side, worried; he kept looking at the still silent Jax, and then at Rip, who, even if not their captain any longer, was still the maximum expert on time-travel and its side effects. “I thought our bodies had gotten accustomed to time fluctuations by this time…”

“Time-Fluctuations? Yeah. But definitely not _that_.” Eyes as wide as a saucer, he pointed a finger in the direction of the bed; Stein followed his instructions, and it was in that moment that he was met by icy blue eyes, that were grinning mischievously at him. 

“What Doc, you’ve never seen a dead man coming back to life before?” 

“Len?” “Len?” Both Sara and Kara asked at the same time, approaching slowly and carefully the bed, one at each side; Snart, fluently and elegantly, like he had never been hurt before, moved, almost like if he were a cat, and looked from one blonde to the other one. 

“Well, Hello. You are new…”

Kara lifted an eyebrow, snorting in a very un-lady like manner. “Please. I’ve known each other for, like, years. You even helped me out when Daxam tried to invade Earth! You liked my boyfriend! Not in a “I want to kiss you and make babies with you” kind of way, but in a totally platonic way.”

“Supergirl, I don’t think this is the same man you walked through the portal with…”

“Damn right, Haircut.” Snart chuckled, and shook his head; then, he turned to his other side; Sara was looking at him with eyes wide open, glassy; her mouth was forming a perfect “o” of surprise and disbelief, and she was trying to reach out to him with her right hand- like touching him would make it much more real, would make her understand who she was facing.

“Len?” She asked, gulping down a mouthful of saliva, her voice but a whisper between the soft humming of the machines. 

“Miss Lance. I believe we left some argument hanging…” He grinned, smiling his mischievous expression, and licked his lips as Sara blushed, something no one, not even Felicity Smoack, had been able to accomplish in years and years.

“Told you I wasn’t crazy.” Mick dead-panned. 

“Yes, yes, yes, thank you very much. Now, would you please take this stuff off? Needles don’t agree with me.”

“I can’t believe… I mean, I was aware that Miss Lance had been resurrected herself, but, I don’t understand how it could be possible that…”Stein joined the blonde heroines at Snart’s side; he started to check the scans, the equipment, even the man himself; then, like he was about to scream Eureka at top of his lungs, he hurried to Mick Rory, and all too cheerfully put his hands on the other man’s shoulders. “Ah! I was right! When I told you the Oculus had probably fragmented Mister Snart’s consciousness and turned him into a time-ghost!”

“I thought you were being sarcastic, Grey, when you told him about the ghost!”

“Well, apparently, Mister Jackson, I was right anyway. The Vortex inside the ship together with our recent status as… aberrations, must have somehow attracted Mister Snart back to the Waverider. I believe that this Mister Snart may be a completely different Mister Snart from the one who visited Mister Rory’s psyche a few months ago.”

“Ok, but…” Nate asked, quizzically, not even trying to pretend to get any of that. “if he was haunting the Waverider, why was Mick the only one of us that could talk with him?”

“The device that the Time Masters inserted in his body when he was Cronus… although inactive, it must have someone altered Mister Rory’s very being, rendering him more susceptible to temporal events such as the presence of Mister Snart’s ghost…”

“Did you call me a freak?” Mick asked. 

“That’s not exactly what I said! Even if I’m wondering how exactly our Leonard Snart jumped into the body of Miss…” Stein paused, looking at Kara, trying to remember if he knew her surname, and if he knew, what the correct alien pronunciation was. “of Supergirl’s Captain Cold.”

“Oh, it’s just like in Ghost Whisperer, when Melinda’s husband pass away and instead of walking into the light, he goes and possess the body of a guy who was dying and he comes back and they live happily ever after….” Ray sighed, dreamily; when they all looked at him quizzically, or like he had suddenly gotten another pair of heads, he acted completely unashamed and with complete nonchalance. “What? Ghost Whisperer was a great show!”

“Forgetting the idiocies of Mister Palmer, I believe that this possession we are witnessing may be working like a transplant; inhabiting a body that is, essentially, his own, mister Snart may never experience things such as rejection. Even in ghostly possession there may be such a thing…”

“Well, if we want to know if everything is in working order, I’d suggest to get Kara back to the portal and then proceed to 2017 New Orleans… if we’re lucky Constantine will finally be out of Hell. If there’s someone who knows about ghosts, that’s our man… and now all back to the deck and ready to jump, and… let’s leave our patient rest, all right?”

As everyone left the room, Sara stood behind, in silence, her gaze lingering on Len’s still pale features- and yet, it was like he was slowly coming back, like he was being returned to who and what he was; she inhaled slowly, and looked at him, a bit dreamily, a bit devilish, her back leaning against the doorframe. 

“Go back to your men, captain- We’re going to have all the time we want to explore our little experiment, Pretty Bird.”

Laughing and shaking her head, Sara followed his orders. 

It was nice not being the one to lead, every now and then. 

And besides, the sooner she talked with John… the sooner she would see if Leonard was as good in bed as he was in the dreams he had caused her… 

**Author's Note:**

> Michael "Booster Gold" Carter is, in canon, Rip's father; Booster was a loser and an hero-wonnabe with a gambling issue, who was turned into a fine time-lord by none other then Rip himself, who told him that his father (aka Booster) thought him as well so that he could get back in time and turn Booster into a time-master and complete and repeat the circle.  
> In comics, Captain Cold was made a member of the League by none other than Luthor himself. When the word believed Luthor the reason the Crime Sindacate had been stopped; also in comics, Pretty Bird is the nickname that Green Arrow has for his long-time girlfriend, Dinah "Black Canary" Lance...


End file.
